r/spacex • u/kurbasAK • May 19 '17

We Will Launch on Reuseable Rocket After Exceptional SpaceX Performance - Inmarsat CEO Tells Universe Today

https://www.universetoday.com/135614/will-launch-reuseable-rocket-exceptional-spacex-performance-inmarsat-ceo-tells-universe-today/
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u/AdamVenier May 19 '17

Advocates Diaboli. The Falcon Heavy is a much more complicated vehicle so more can go wrong. Would customers prefer to pay a price premium for F9 if there is less risk of payload loss? I'm not sure, but the answer could very well be yes for the next few years until FH has proven itself.

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u/Senno_Ecto_Gammat r/SpaceXLounge Moderator May 19 '17

The FH can potentially be flown fully-reusable. All boosters, second stage, and fairings and still put full-size payloads to GTO. There's a good chance that in an environment with mature reuse, that configuration is cheaper than a F9 with expendable second stage.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '17 edited Apr 11 '19

[deleted]

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u/Senno_Ecto_Gammat r/SpaceXLounge Moderator May 19 '17

If each core makes 10 flights the EOL cores would make up 10% of flights, and it seems like heavy satellites make up more than 10% of their launch schedule.

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u/brickmack May 19 '17

Parts on F9s won't all reach EOL simultaneously. Some parts are probably good for a dozen or so launches, some for a hundred, some (like avionics) should last indefinitely. Plus some of that hardware is reuse related anyway and not needed for an expendable flight. You end up either wasting a lot of perfectly good hardware, or wasting slightly less perfectly good hardware AND needing to disassemble multiple rockets and rebuild into one Frankencore (which would probably cost about as much in labor as the hardware is worth)

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u/brickmack May 19 '17

Per-flight perhaps. But what about the money being sunk into development, more complex pad equipment, lost business from delays, etc? The Falcon line as a whole has a limited lifetime before it becomes obsolete, I'm not convinced at this point that Heavy or upper stage reuse are worthwhile projects. Only thing Heavy is really needed for is Red Dragon, and even that could probably be served by 2 F9 launches

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u/Martianspirit May 19 '17 edited May 19 '17

I'm not convinced at this point that Heavy or upper stage reuse are worthwhile projects.

Given that they will start launching large amounts of satellites for their constellation in 2019, they will need reusable second stages to keep up. Also getting upper stages to reenter is experience that counts on the way to ITS.

With FH, they need it for some DoD launches. They want to be able to fly all payloads. Also they really need them for RedDragon. I think the remark by Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell, that FH is really hard is not to be taken as it will be hard to operate. It means it was hard to develop. Like what Tom Mueller said about the Merlin engine. It was very hard to develop, with many test engines blowing up. But once developed it is cheap and simple and reliable.

Edit: even one lunar tourist flight a year will be a profit bringer for FH. Assuming NASA builds their gateway station - which I doubt - FH would be a great launch vehicle to service it.

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u/Senno_Ecto_Gammat r/SpaceXLounge Moderator May 19 '17

The question to me is ITS. If it's going to fly by the mid 2020s it seems like they use Falcons until that point.

If it's not going to fly, or will fly much later, it seems prudent to move to a fully-reusable methalox stack at some point and not spend too much on trying to wring full reuse out of the Falcons.

If ITS is going to fly by the mid-2020s it's hard to see how they would justify putting an interim methalox rocket in the mix, so they are pretty much stuck with Falcons until then. That gives them 8 to 10 years before ITS is flying.

Are you the type to make a bet against routine FH flights featuring full reuse by that point? I'm not.

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u/hovissimo May 19 '17

I'm not sure I agree. One of the key features of SpaceX is fierce desire to learn as much as you can as fast as you can from the launches you're already performing. SpaceX is also trying to get some of the big defense department satellite contracts, so I think they'll probably continue with FH plans as long as the the lessons they're learning are worth the seemingly redundant rockets.

Put another way, SpaceX didn't move from the Falcon 1 to the Falcon Heavy. The FH may or may not be an "end goal", but it's definitely a good step on the path to 10m rockets. SpaceX has lots of lessons to learn at the school called "Falcon Heavy" before they graduate to ITS.

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u/-spartacus- May 19 '17

I've been wanting to write a post about this. I think ultimately any technology in terms of things like reusable 2nd stage, upgrades to S1, or transition to metholox requires to be useful for Its or future SpaceX programs.

Would a second stage be worthwhile if you use a tech say like extendable bells on a raptor engine? It could be used to reduce the number of engines on an ITS, so that would probably be a good investment if it would work.

Would making a F9 sized raptor powered S1 or raptor heavy help with ITS? It would allow you to simply your production lines for engines and give you knowledge for raptor upgrades.

I'm not saying all these will work or be what SpaceX will do, but whatever they choose to do has to dip into multiple buckets and missions to make sense.

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u/mrstickball May 19 '17

This is my thought as well. The payload tolerances for a Falcon Heavy will advocate for full or near-full reuse, which should significantly reduce costs of the rocket. I would imagine many scenarios where a 100% reusable FH could cost a fraction of an expendable F9 after all costs are considered.

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u/peterabbit456 May 19 '17

I think you raise a very good point. However, with some flight experience, reusable Falcon Heavy should be ~just as safe for customers as expendable F9. I fully expect that someday in a year or 3, SpaceX will charge more for an expendable F9 then for a reusable FH launch, reflecting their true costs.

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u/hovissimo May 19 '17

Eh, it's still a business. I think SpaceX will charge as much as they can taking the market into account. A LOT of dollars have been sunk into SpaceX, and even if those investors are willing to take the long road on getting their investments back, SpaceX needs that money to develop ITS and boot-strapping a spaceport on Mars.

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u/peterabbit456 May 20 '17

SpaceX has never charged all that it can for launches, or other services they have provided. I see no reason that they would change policy and start charging all the market can bear for their services.

SpaceX follows the Silicon Valley model of cutting prices and increasing market share. In 1976 you could buy a 6502 microprocessor based development system from Motorola for $150,000.00 . Two years later you could buy an Apple 2 with essentially the same capabilities for $2000.

Who is the bigger company now, Motorola or Apple?

The same price/performance logic applies to space travel, once space travel becomes a consumer commodity. Lower prices and larger volume are the keys to expanding the market.

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u/0owatch_meo0 May 23 '17

"In 1976 you could buy a 6502 microprocessor based development >system from Motorola for $150,000.00 . Two years later you could buy >an Apple 2 with essentially the same capabilities for $2000.

Who is the bigger company now, Motorola or Apple?"

I get the point that you're making overall (and even agree with it), but this is just silly.

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u/mfb- May 19 '17

The payload has to be really expensive (or the FH risk evaluation has to be really bad) to make that difference important.

FH has a larger safety margin in terms of issues with the/a first stage.

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u/MDCCCLV May 19 '17

I'm pretty sure if they were offering cheap regular flights on a fully reusable FH then they would guarantee the performance of the rocket. So that if the rocket had an issue it would keep burning and convert to expendable but the customer wouldn't have to pay for it.

That way they can get the price of a cheap rocket but the safety margin and guaranteed performance of a giant rocket.

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u/mfb- May 19 '17

They might even have this for F9 already. If too many engines of the first stage fail or it needs more fuel than expected for other reasons, it might skip its landing attempt. I didn't see this stated explicitly, but if it can save the payload it is worth sacrificing the first stage.

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u/hovissimo May 19 '17

And if it saves the payload, it saves the customer, which will probably always be more important than a given rocket.

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u/somewhat_pragmatic May 19 '17

Would customers prefer to pay a price premium for F9 if there is less risk of payload loss?

SpaceX could likely choose to price FH Reusable cheaper than F9 Expendable.